Those of you who joined Slade at Poe's Grave for the reading of "The Telltale Heart" at midnight on Friday 13th will find this of interest. Some folks don't know when to stand back...

BALTIMORE (AP) - For the 57th straight year, a mystery man paid tribute to Edgar Allan Poe by placing roses and a bottle of cognac on the writer's grave to mark his birthday.

Some of the 25 spectators drawn to a tiny, locked graveyard in downtown Baltimore for the ceremony climbed over the walls of the site and were "running all over the place trying to find out how the guy gets in," according to Jeff Jerome, the most faithful viewer of the event.

Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, said early Thursday that he had to chase people out of the graveyard, fearing they would interfere with the mystery visitor's ceremony.

"In letting people know about this tribute, I've been contributing to these people's desire to catch this guy," Jerome said. "It's such a touching tribute, and it's been disrupted by the actions of a few people trying to interfere and expose this guy."

Jerome has seen the mysterious visitor every Jan. 19 since 1976.

Poe, who wrote poems and horror stories such as "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart," died Oct. 7, 1849 in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern.

Ugh, what a poor showing of disrespect from a barrelful of bad apples. It's one thing to wonder how the magician does a trick, quite another to forcibly look up his sleeve. Let's hope that the visitor isn't dissuaded from future tributes.

2007 is shaping up to be much busier than expected. Not only am I deep in the next novel, and consulting on a legal case or two, but now I've signed on to be a "detective" on a 13-part TV show (more on that later).

Unfortunately, the timing is such that I won't be able to attend the World Horror Convention in Toronto as planned. It's been a while since The Ghouls congregated in Baltimore, so hopefully there will be an opportunity in 2008.

2007 is shaping up to be much busier than expected. Not only am I deep in the next novel, and consulting on a legal case or two, but now I've signed on to be a "detective" on a 13-part TV show (more on that later).

Unfortunately, the timing is such that I won't be able to attend the World Horror Convention in Toronto as planned. It's been a while since The Ghouls congregated in Baltimore, so hopefully there will be an opportunity in 2008.

Slade

Sounds like the wait will be worth it. You'll have plenty more to talk about in '08.

The more I think about it, the more fun Winnipeg will be. There are so many stories to tell, and we'll be standing on the spot where each took place.

Often, when I'm standing on a piece of ground, I find myself asking, "I wonder what took place here in the past?" A battle, a murder, a love affair, a scandal, etc? Or I find myself wandering around town, and remembering what establishment stood somewhere in the past, and all the good times I had.

Sadly, most of what's built there now pales in comparison.

Sparky, I remembered. But I forgot about Dempsey. So we'll have that story too.

Also, Manitoba is where the RCMP began, so we'll have all those historical sites:

The real Sladeville isn't Vancouver, British Columbia. The real Sladeville is Winnipeg, Manitoba.

You know the story. That's where I was attacked by a rabid mad dog named Sparky. The connection would morph into the psychotic killer in HEADHUNTER.

That's also where I came down with the flu while walking the Witchy Path through the woods that led to my school, and was later sent home after throwing up in my Grade One class. My dad picked me up by chance at the bus stop on his way home from an overnight flight, and we stopped at the drugstore where I hallucinated over the "headhunter cover" on a men's magazine. That would later get fictionalized in the "What's Up, Doc?" section of HEADHUNTER.

Where I lived - Wildwood Park - was in Fort Garry, a section of Winnipeg named for the 19th century fort. From there, Inspector Wilfred Blake, my mad Mountie (based on Sir William Francis Butler), made his trek by dogsled across the Great Lone Land in the dead of winter, and later recommended formation of the Mounted Police. When the Mounties began their Great March West to suppress the whisky traders occupying Fort Whoop-Up, they left from Fort Garry:

One of the Guests of Honor will be F. Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack), my old drinking buddy, who once helped me shut down a bar in L.A. with too many shots of tequila!

The definition of Sladist is anyone who has read all 13 novels. But within that group is a sub-cult known as The Ghouls. A Ghoul is any Sladist who has made a pilgrimage, and there has only been one prilgrimage so far: the reading at Poe's Grave in Baltimore at midnight on Friday the 13th, 2004, during HorrorFind.

Don't anyone book anything until I say, but who would be up for a second meeting of The Ghouls around the World Horror Convention in Winnipeg next year? We could take a side trip out to Fort Garry to see where Inspector Wilfred Blake began his rampage, and then go into Wildwood Park, past the school and where the drugstore once stood, to the site of Sparky's attack. The trek would end with a masked gathering of The Ghouls in the woods on the Witchy Path (yes, it's still there) at night, for a reading from HEADHUNTER and Novel Number 14, coming later that year.

We could YouTube it.

So, if the word goes out, "All aboard, Ghouls," who thinks they might want to ride with me? We're going back to the beginning, as far down in the pit as you can ride the Hellbound Train.